TechnoCloud

Interesting post from Micropersuasion adding to the growing questioning of page views as a meaningful metric.

Given the growth in technologies, such as Ajax and even humble old Flash, which allow users to interact with page content without refreshing the page, the page view was already on questionnable ground - not that the industry could agree on how best to measure them in the first place…

Add to this the network effects of influencers that take an idea or brand and discuss it outside of the source site on their blog or social space and it challenges the traditional ad standard of ‘reach’ with an alternative measure ‘depth’ - although you should still look to measure the wider reach of a campaign from the wider network effects of ‘depth’.

I can see how the ‘depth’ argument works well for brands using online advertising and PR as ways to raise awareness, stimulate conversations and drive sales of their products.

It’s less clear for content publishers trying to monetise their content through advertising - how to charge and for what? Are unique users the metric, or are channel or site sponsorships the right model or are other models better suited to this space? Time will tell. It’s debatable how important page views were anyway in the wider world of stats and cost-per-click and cost-per-action advertising.

For content publishers non-intrusive ad-supported widgets may be a tool to monetise some of the depth and for wider network effects to be the PR that drives users back to the source content and widgets. 2007 is going to be an interesting year.

The lively TechCrunch UK and Ireland has been put ‘on hold’ with its equally lively editor Sam Sethi removed from his post, as TechCrunch’s Michael Arrington explains.

The gory details have been widely reported and centre around mixed feedback on social media conference Le Web 3, with organiser Loïc Le Meur objecting to Sam’s conference review, which spiralled into the subsequent fallout.

I hope that TechCrunch UK and Ireland can make a comeback as it was a valuable resource on start-ups and technology in the region.

Ironically enough, last night I attented the Mashup event, among whose sponsors were of course TechCrunch UK and Ireland. I certainly didn’t spot Sam at the event. Of concern is that TechCrunch UK and Ireland is scheduled to get involved in the organising of the Mashup events from next year, so I hope a solution can be found.

As “Oscar Wilde 2.0″ might have said, to lose one may be regarded as a misfortune; to lose both looks like carelessness.

Here’s an interesting application of a recommendation engine:  The Filter.  This kind of software is likely to be much more useful that the Playlist features built into your favourite media player.  It only works with iTunes and Windows XP right now, but there are versions in development for Mac and for Windows Media Player.

That man in constant motion Robert Scoble points to Quintura, an intriguing search engine based on refining your search through a tag cloud.

It boasts a clean interface, accompanied by a helpful one minute tour, and I found it simple to use. You type a query, related search terms appear in a tag cloud which you can add to your search by clicking on them, refining the search results below. You can roll your mouse over related search terms to see hints for additional search terms or click on an ‘x’ symbol to remove that term from your cloud.

It’s an interesting way of quicky refining your search results for ambiguous terms, e.g. spears (Britney or weapon?), something that Google and others have looked to address through predictive search ‘did you mean’ links within the search results.

The search results state that they are ‘Powered by Yahoo XML’ suggesting that Quintura technology can be built on top of other existing search services.

The service tries its best to include the relevant Web 2.0 must-haves, starting of course with the obligatory blog. However, ‘Share it’ at present just emails a link to Quintura to a friend rather than an extended social network of recommended sites. Likewise ‘Save it’ just shows you how to save a link to your search rather than any kind of social bookmarking. 

These elements of course can be developed over time and this is at present a ‘beta’ (what isn’t these days?). Their corporate site indicates there’s more plenty in the pipeline, so this is one to watch.